


Right Where You Left It

by Great_Raven_Parade



Category: Hilda (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:47:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23657833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Great_Raven_Parade/pseuds/Great_Raven_Parade
Summary: Hilda pays a visit to an old friend. But she's distraught to find that not everything is as she remembers it.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42





	Right Where You Left It

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is related to 'Everything Stays' and follows many of the same themes. Either story can be read on its own, however! Also available on [fanfiction.net](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13553138/1/Right-Where-You-Left-It).

“Is that our old VHS player?”

Hilda glanced around the Woodman’s home. It was mostly like she remembered it; People didn’t often rearrange their whole houses in a span of a few months, after all. But she was starting to notice the odd thing out, here and there.

Woodman looked at the appliance, then back to Hilda. “It’s in my house, isn’t it? I think that indicates that it’s mine.”

“Well, where did you get it all the way out here in the Wilderness?” Hilda probed.

Woodman’s poker face was as good as ever. “I’m not stuck out here in the woods, you know. I’m just as capable as you are of walking to town and purchasing any item I please.”

Hilda pointed to the cord running from the back of the VHS player, which clearly wasn’t connected to anything. “Then why haven’t you bought a television set to go with it?”

The Woodman just shrugged. He wasn’t going to give her anything to work with. Hilda crossed her arms and turned away from the tape player, looking for something she could be more certain was hers.

“Aha! You have been taking things from our old house!” she accused, snatching up a small, wooden knickknack in a vaguely humanoid shape. She studied the familiar paint job, the chips near the base, and the place where the figurine’s once-long hair had been snapped off. She was never sure if the hair had been intentional or just another sign of wear. She had pondered this countless times when she had passed the shelf it sat on in the hall outside her mother’s old room.

“Maybe we just have similar tastes in interior design,” Woodman responded coolly. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

“It’s not imitation, it’s stealing.” She put the wooden figure down onto the stump that served as Woodman’s coffee table and started looking around for more ‘imitation’ decorations. “That’s the tapestry from above my bed!”

“It never looked nice up there, you know. It cluttered up the wall and made your room look much smaller than it was. It fits this space much better.”

“So, you’re not denying it was mine,” Hilda asserted. She eyed the tacks holding the tapestry to the rough bark on Woodman’s wall.

Woodman shrugged. “It’s not like you were using any of this stuff anymore.” He turned back to his tea, “Also, I’m not helping you take that down.”

Hilda turned away from the tapestry. She could get it later. Maybe Raven and Alfur could help her when they came back to pick her up. She had an eye out for her and her mother’s belongings, now. It looked like a lot of their books had survived, and now lined Woodman’s shelves. A surprising number of little knickknacks and tchotchkes had made it through the destruction, too. Some of their pots and pans were in the kitchen.

“The elves have been taking things too, you know. They’ve got a whole system about it,” Woodman called across the house, “You could probably go to them if you want a complete ledger.”

Hilda glared at him.

He inhaled sharply and looked away, “Or… You could just keep stomping around my house and grabbing things.”

Hilda couldn’t describe why this was making her so upset. It wasn’t like she and her mom needed these things anymore. They hadn’t really even needed most of them in the first place. But seeing them plucked from her memories and scattered about this new setting felt… Wrong. These objects didn’t belong here, in the Woodman’s house. In fact, maybe they didn’t even belong here, in the present moment. They should be back in Hilda’s happy memories. Here and now they were just pieces of a broken whole, and they threatened to ruin the versions of themselves that Hilda had so carefully curated in her head. She deposited a few small items on the table in front of the fire. Woodman watched her without any change in expression. He occasionally took a sip of tea. Like he didn’t even care. Of course he didn’t care.

Hilda tried to swallow the lump in her throat, “I visited you because I thought it would be a fun way to pass the time while Alfur runs his errands in the Northern Counties. Now I’m starting to regret it.” She didn’t add that she had been scared to see the wreckage of her old house for this very reason. That she had thought this would be a way escape that scenario without letting on to anyone how she really felt.

Woodman tilted his head, looking at her with his unchanging expression. “Then leave. I’m not the one who’s keeping you,” was all he said.

But he was right. Hilda didn’t want to leave. She wanted Woodman to apologize. She wanted… Well… Hilda looked down at the arrangement of items on the coffee table. Where would these even go in their new apartment? She didn’t want to find new places for the old things. She… Wanted the old places for the old things. The ones she could see in her mind’s eye so clearly, even though months had passed.

“I just- I thought I had moved on. I love living in Trolberg now- It _is_ my home, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything! But coming back and seeing pieces of my old house again… It makes me wish things had never changed. I know I shouldn’t feel that way, but I do,” Hilda admitted. She could feel a pressure building behind her eyes. She didn’t want to cry in front of Woodman. He’d probably only laugh at her. He might even just laugh at her for what she’d already said.

Woodman looked at her. Any moment now he’d make a sound like laughter come out of his wood-knot mouth. Or maybe he’d say something biting, or just insist she get out of his house once more.

“No one said you can’t miss your time out here.” His tone wasn’t gentle but… It wasn’t malicious either. It was sincere. Hilda was taken aback by it. She had only ever heard him sound like this once before. She said nothing as he continued, “It would be stranger if you didn’t. You can miss this old life and still appreciate your new one.”

The Woodman got up, his joints creaking a little. He set his tea down and began to shift some of the knickknacks Hilda had placed on the table before him. Hilda watched in silence as he turned over a decorative ceramic bowl. It had been painted by Hilda's mother at some point- her signature was squeezed into a visible but unobtrusive little place among the yellow, red, and teal geometric patterning. The whole inner surface had been filled with meticulous little brush strokes. There was a large chip missing from one side, now. When Woodman turned the bowl over, the missing chip looked like the door to a little elf house. He put the figurine with the short hair near the entrance and added a bright blue rock that Hilda knew she had painted sometime when she was much younger (Her mother had always kept it on her drawing desk as a paperweight).

With this diorama arranged, he explained, “You seem to think that once you say goodbye to things, they just stop. You can only remember the last time you saw them- And so you expect them to remain in place, frozen to match your memory forever.” He grabbed the rock and the figurine gently and placed them on the other side of the table, facing away from the bowl. Then he turned it right side up again and shoveled several of the smaller items on the table into it, mixing them around. It looked like rubble. Figurative and literal remains of Hilda’s old life.

“So, when you see them again, the difference is jarring. Because you think that the walls _should_ be intact, and the floors _should_ have fewer scuffs in them. The truth is nothing _should be_ anything. Everything is in a constant state of becoming something new. And that kitchen counter you swear was just a little bit taller reminds you that you’ve changed too.” He paused and looked up at her, “You’ve grown since you last lived in this world. And maybe these things wouldn’t look quite the same to you, even if they had stood still.”

Hilda crossed her arms and dug her fingers into her sweater. It was red with yellow trim- The kind she always wore when she wanted to feel most like herself. “So, it all would have changed anyways? There was no way to save it? I don’t see how this is supposed to make me feel better,” she told him. Though, despite her stubbornness in accepting the Woodman’s advice, the tears had stopped threatening to flow.

“We all have to say goodbye eventually. Some goodbyes are slow and subtle. We don’t even realize we’re saying them. Others are harsher and more sudden.” The Woodman tilted his head, “It’s ok to mourn- Especially after the hard goodbyes. But you need to remember: Nothing is bound by memory except for you, when you allow yourself to be. And when you do that, you give up your abilities to grow, to change, and to heal. Cherish the past, it will always be a part of you. But don't dwell on what's already happened more than you appreciate the present. Or look forward to the future.”

Hilda had certainly changed a lot since moving to Trolberg. And though she hadn’t wanted to believe her mother when she had said that moving to the city was the best thing for her… Well… Hilda had learned a lot of things she never would have learned by staying out here. She had met a lot of friends she never would have met and done a lot of things she never would have done. Not that she had ever been anything but content out in the Wilderness but… Before she had discovered the elves, some of the days would run together in their sameness. In Trolberg, things could be complicated and urban and new, but they could also be big and exciting and… Well, new. The truth was, she could see a future stretching out before her in Trolberg much more clearly than she had ever been able to see one in the Wilderness. Out here, she had only been able to conceive of an endless present. Maybe that wasn’t a good thing.

There was a long pause before Woodman finished, “If things always stayed the way we wanted them to, we’d never see any reason to improve. And there wouldn’t be any reason to appreciate what we have when we have it. That’s my take on it, anyways.”

“It’s good advice,” Hilda admitted, “Thank you.”

Woodman shrugged. “Don’t mention it,” he said.

A moment passed in which Hilda considered giving the Woodman a hug. But he ended things right there, as they were clearly getting too sweet for his tastes. "Seriously. Don't."

Looking back down at the bowl of knickknacks in front of him, he said, “Well, with that all resolved- I’d be happy to take all these out-of-place memories off your hands. Since you don’t _really_ need them.”

Hilda smiled wryly, “You just want our old stuff.”

Woodman picked his dirt tea back up and shrugged. “That too.”


End file.
